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“If I asked, would you have stayed?”
Harvey drops the blunt from his fingers and watches as it falls onto the carpet. A smudge of ash stains the fabric, but he can’t find the energy to care.
The high has long taken over his senses. His body rests limply against his office couch, facing the night view of New York. Tall buildings glow with yellow lights, stretching all the way across the horizon.
“Would you have ever asked?” Mike picks up the blunt from where it lies on the carpet and inhales it.
“I almost did,” Harvey responds. It’s quiet for a moment.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I knew I wouldn’t like your answer.”
Mike doesn’t respond to that. He is focused on the blunt, matching Harvey’s position and tilting his head back against the couch. He missed New York far more than he ever admitted to Rachel. Being in this office brings back memories - just him and Harvey 200 feet in the air, looking down on the streets they called home. No Rachel, no Donna.
Now, it has been three years since he left. It’s about 10 p.m. in Seattle - Rachel probably just got home from her client dinner. She would have gone to take a shower immediately, and afterwards she’d sit at the kitchen table to finish up some paperwork. In the back of her mind, she might wonder why her house is strangely quiet.
Then, in about thirty minutes, Rachel will push away her files and head to bed. And instead of finding her husband asleep, her bed will be empty. Either she’ll freak out and blow up Mike’s phone, or she’ll assume that he’s simply working late again.
Considering that the blunt has long been finished and Mike’s phone is still quiet, he supposes that she went with the second option.
That’s a good thing, though. He doesn’t feel like explaining to his wife that he hopped on the first plane to New York because his ex-boss had a particularly bad panic attack.
Maybe Mike overreacted. But he’s been on edge ever since he got that call from Donna, where she hysterically explained that the panic attacks were back - and the latest one ended with Harvey in the hospital.
“You definitely overreacted.” Harvey isn’t sitting on the carpet anymore. He’s tidying up the office, grabbing the remaining files off his desk and locking them in a cabinet. “I’m fine. It wasn’t even that bad, the doctors let me go in a couple of hours.”
Mike finally stands up. “When did they start?”
Harvey looks away and continues to fix up some files. “They’ve been on and off. I hadn’t had one for months, this one was just an exception-”
“When did they start, Harvey?”
“... About three years ago.”
Mike scoffs. “And you didn’t say anything.”
“There was nothing to be said,” Harvey snaps back. “You’ve been gone, Mike. We haven’t spoken in two years. If I told you what was going on, nothing would have changed.”
“Well I came back, didn’t I?”
“You’re back because you feel guilty,” Harvey grits out, his fists clenched. “Well, let me stop you now - I don’t need your pity. I can handle this without you.”
The room is quiet. For once, Mike is at a loss of words. He doesn’t know how to explain himself - how the night he left for Seattle, he hid in the bathroom and cried like he had when Grammy died. How everytime he wanted to pick up the phone and call Harvey, he forced himself into work to avoid the temptation. And how after three years, he was finally learning to bury his feelings deep - until he got the call from Donna that felt like a heap of ice water to his head.
Mike doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he heads to the glass doors of the office.
“Come on, it’s late. You should call Ray, neither of us are in the right mind to drive right now.”
Harvey silently complies.
***
“Okay. Citizen Kane or Casablanca?”
“We are not watching Casablanca,” Harvey calls out from his bedroom. Mike rolls his eyes as he flips through the cd collection below the tv.
“It’s a classic,” he mutters under his breath, picking out Citizen Kane. Just as he’s inserting it into the player, Harvey walks out dressed in a full suit.
Mike pauses.
“Woah, hold on,” he walks over to the other man. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Harvey looks at him exasperatedly. “Mike, it’s 8 in the morning. What do you think I’m doing?”
“I’m not going to let you leave. I promised Donna I’d keep you out of the office for the rest of the week.”
Harvey pushes past him and grabs a bagel from the kitchen - straight from the pack, no cream cheese. His posture is stiff and unwelcoming. It’s been awkward between them since last night. The two men can’t seem to figure out which direction the other is going to walk, or which slice of pizza to reach for, or even which seat to drop onto.
At one point last night, Mike nearly sat on Harvey’s lap before rushedly shifting to the adjacent cushion. Harvey, caught off-guard, sat hesitant as if he was going to say something, but eventually looked away and reached for the remote.
The silence is painful. It’s such an unfamiliar kind of quiet, one that neither man is used to, and one that neither man can fill.
So Harvey grabs his house keys instead and heads to the door. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Mike stares, mouth agape. And in a few large strides, he catches up and grabs Harvey’s hand. Warm skin instantly tenses under Mike’s grip. His feet dig into the ground a little harder.
“I told you,” Mike grits out, “I’m not letting you leave. And I’m not leaving either, so you're stuck with me today.”
For a second, it’s tense. Harvey’s eyes are scarily cold; and Mike wonders what lies beneath them, what the other man is hiding.
“At least let me change out of my suit, then,” Harvey concedes. “Or are you scared I’ll jump out the window?”
Mike’s lips twitch. “Kind of like the lion from Wizard of Oz? I couldn’t picture you in a fursuit.”
Harvey scoffs dryly. “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?” He calls out just as he’s in the bedroom. And before Mike can respond, the door slams shut.
***
The movie ended hours ago, and Harvey is only five minutes from losing his mind. He attempted to sneak onto his laptop, aiming to review the files of a case, only for Mike to snatch it away and lock it in a cupboard, as if they’re two ten-year olds fighting over a toy sword. Harvey might have laughed at the whole situation if he wasn’t so pissed.
Instead he settles on glaring at Mike, who is awkwardly fumbling with a knife and a chopping board. The man insisted on cooking dinner, while Harvey hovers a finger over 911 in case the kitchen burns down.
“It’s fucking spaghetti,” Mike grumbles. “I’m not going to mess up spaghetti. Besides, I actually cook most of my meals, since not everyone can live off of Chinese takeout every night.”
“You have time to cook?” Harvey raises his eyebrows dramatically. “You clearly aren’t working hard enough.”
“Or maybe…” Mike feigns deep thought for a moment, his knife paused in the air, “have you considered that… I don’t know, you possibly need to get a life?”
Harvey clicks his tongue. “You know me Mike-”
The younger man rolls his eyes, familiar with the speech that is about to come-
“-the easy life? It doesn’t cut it for me. I need more, bec-”
“-because life is over here, and I like it up here,” Mike says dramatically, waving the knife around for added effect. “Sure, Jordan Belfort. Don’t you think this material is getting old? It’s aging just as terribly as you.” And as he finishes the sentence, he looks straight at the other man.
Harvey’s smiling.
He doesn’t even bother hiding it. It’s a sensitive thing, something that slips on his face so easily in a way that hasn't happened in so long. Mike just watches, transfixed.
“L-Look, all I’m saying is that there’s more to life,” the younger man stumbles out once he pulls himself together. “You need more purpose than your eight-to-six. You’ll grow old eventually.”
“Purpose? You mean like Rachel? Or do you think I’m too dumb to notice that you’re in New York with your phone silenced instead of kissing your wife goodnight?” Harvey winces as soon as he says those words. Mike’s face falls a little. It was a low blow, and they both know it.
The older man opens his mouth hesitantly. He should apologize, he should-
“You’re right,” Mike cuts through the silence of the apartment. “We’re hardly the model for a healthy relationship.”
The confession hangs in the air between them. The knife picks up its rhythm of banging against wood, and for a second, Harvey thinks the conversation is over.
“Our relationship works,” Mike blurts out suddenly, the sound of chopping ceasing once more. “I know it’s not conventional, but it works. We understand each other. I-” He pauses, struggling with the next words, almost as if he’s convincing himself to not say it. “We don’t need love. I mean we tried, we really did, but… it’s fine. This is enough.”
It’s quiet for a moment longer - and then Mike dumps the tomatoes into a hot pan, briefly wincing at the sound of sizzling oil.
Harvey turns to his whisky. He silences the thoughts running through his mind and says emptily, “It’ll get better.”
“Yeah,” Mike lies. “It probably will.”
The spaghetti tastes perfect. Harvey pours himself two more fingers of Bourbon to dull the flavor.
***
Harvey doesn’t sleep that night. He thinks of blue eyes and innocent laughter, of the days when it all started. Running around between cases, spending late nights pouring over files, all while fighting to hide Mike's secret.
By the bags under Mike’s eyes during breakfast, it’s clear that he didn’t sleep much either.
“I’m going to call Rachel tonight,” Mike says between bites of a hashbrown. Harvey briefly pauses before bringing the fork to his mouth. The diner bustles with the morning New York City crowd.
“That’s good,” Harvey responds absentmindedly. Mike plays with his food.
“Well, I haven’t really decided what to say yet.” The younger man hesitates. “But, um. I don’t know.”
“Just say it,” Harvey comments with a frown.
“I mean, it’s just that if you had something to say before I make the call, then maybe I’d know what to tell Rachel.”
Mike hasn’t looked up in the last ten minutes. Finally, Harvey sees the signs of a man in discomfort. He wonders what truly has been on Mike's mind, and of the thoughts tormenting him. Harvey wonders for how long his old associate has been working up the courage to speak.
Both men sit in silence. Each one ponders in the midst of a bustling New York City daytime. Dogs pass by in the window to their side, and servers refill water as quickly as it depletes.
Mike lifts his fork back up slowly, picking at his hashbrowns once more.
“You should tell Rachel that you’re not coming back,” Harvey finally breaks the silence. “You should stay.”
Mike looks up suddenly, eyes glistening. It's impossible for a stranger to place the emotions that flash through his expression; but Harvey knows. Mike is too familiar, even after all the years.
The sun shifts overhead. Laughter breaks out at a table nearby.
“Okay,” agrees Mike simply. “I’ll stay.”
Both men turn back to their food, and the simplicity of the moment remains.
Mike forces Casablanca into the blu-ray player that evening, before Harvey can voice out any protests. But Harvey merely smirks when he sees the familiar black-and-white.
Some sacrifices have to be made in any sustaining relationship, he tells himself while kicking his feet up on the center table. Mike comes into his arms and intertwines their legs.
Maybe in some time, Mike will admit that he remembers visiting Harvey after a long day, only to see Casablanca halfway complete on the tv screen. He recognized the freeze-frame immediately before Harvey got his hands on the remote.
It’s simply one of the many uses of an eidetic memory, after all.